For my favorite post of the year for Fierce and Nerdy, I chose to re-publish my Kickstarter how-to. It was by far my most popular post, probably because there are not a lot of straightforward, honest articles of how to succeed in doing a Kickstarter for a video game (I know, because I searched for it before we did the campaign). By now is a success on the app store, and we’re thinking about the next thing. Time Flies! So I’m republishing it because it’s useful, unlike most of the things I write, which are usually half rant and half awkward jokes. Enjoy!  -Matt My little outfit, Part Time Evil, recently decided to do a Kickstarter to fund our indie game . Not the “I need money to live off for a year to make this thing” type of Kickstarter. Everyone on this project is employed in the day, so we raised enough for contractor pay, software, account to publish on iTunes, and all the other things that can really add up. So my point is, the project has zero budget. But as we all know, there’s no such thing as zero budget. That being said this article is something I’m writing so other designers can read it and get a leg up on doing a Kickstarter for a game. We were fortunate enough to succeed in getting the funding, which is not super common on Kickstarter. But it could have been easier, and we could have raised more money if we’d been on top of the following: Let’s just jump right in. What’s a Kickstarter This is a good topic to start with, because you may not know either.  Kickstarter is the worlds largest funding platform for projects. So there are things like crazy...

Originally published 2/3/12 – One of my favorite blogumns from this year!  It was great to look back on this classic TV commercials and see which AT&T products really did come true as predicted.  I remember how heavily these aired over several years.  Tom Selleck, the man who starred as Magnum PI and can currently be seen on CBS’ Blue Bloods is a man way ahead of his time.  Nearly two decades ago, his booming voice predicted some of the most common products and appliances we now take for granted!  Was he right?  Check out these vintage commercials I found! In 1993, AT&T began an advertising campaign showcasing all the future technologies that would soon be in everyone’s home that the phone company was working on.  AT&T was positioning itself as being cutting edge and state of the art as the telecommunications war was getting fiercer.  At the time, smaller phone companies were getting swallowed up and the first discount long distance carriers were coming online. AT&T wanted to make sure everyone knew they were the king of telecommunications and with this commercial campaign, gave us all a glimpse of the not so distant future… The first commercial in the campaign correctly predicted three common items: Downloadable books – When I was in high school at the time, we had a program called Access Pennsylvania.  With a special CD-ROM, you would search for the title of any book, magazine, or video in the cooperating districts.  You would then send a fax request and the library would overnight it.  We thought that was high tech!  Now, you can have a book downloaded electronically over the internet and read it on the train ride to work.  I see dozens of passengers on the subway reading their...

In the nerd and tech communities, we pretty much argue every day about why Apple is horrible or perfect. The one thing we all agree upon is that, just like politics, Apple is polarizing. Let’s gab about the very high level concepts of the debate. Walled Garden A few of the practices of Apple are referred to as the “walled garden.” I like the term ’cause the Secret Garden is one of my favorite musicals (Mandy Patinkin, he’s like butter!). But I digress. What the term means is that a lot of the elements are controlled tightly. For example, to publish an app on an iPhone, you must go through the Apple app approval process. On the contrary, Android has several app stores, and some of them have no strict approval process at all. In short: No apps (unless you have a hacked phone) run on iPhones unless Apple approves them. Hater: You are a tech guy and think that the “walled garden,” un-customizable vault of the app store hinders the ability of developers and individuals to write programs, install custom programs, and use the device for other purposes like teathering to laptops (giving a laptop internet through the phones connection) and shopping on other app stores. Also, if you have your music and other content on an Apple device, it can be hard to move it somewhere else, so you kind of become stuck. This is especially true of less tech savvy peeps. Most of these people have chosen Android for that reason. Android allows your phone to be your phone. If you are a rookie, you can follow the rules and keep it in somewhat factory condition. If you are super tech in nature, you can hack the crap out of it...

My smart phone officially and irrevocably became too smart for its own good on Thursday night at 2:30 AM.  I woke to a light beep and blinking indicator.  I picked up my phone where it sat, functioning as an alarm clock, on my bedside crate.  Instead of the clock I expected to see glowing on the LCD capacitive touch screen, a picture of a smiling green gingerbread man stared back at me. Gingerbread, Android’s new operating system, had arrived.  And he was ready to move in.  Very exciting for the faintly closeted tech fetishist. A few quick button presses, a brief wait, and my phone had become a Gingerbread house.  Casting the remnants of sleep aside, I plunged into my upgraded phone with abandon.  The keyboard had gained the ability to adapt to the maladroit proddings of my chubby fingers, the new app store lived up to expectations, the maps loaded faster, power management was much improved, the refreshed icons with their eerie green glow gave me a sense of comfort, reassuring me that technology was marching forward, filling old shells with new power and capacity.  Gingerbread had seamlessly integrated, my existing configurations and applications were unaffected apart from running more efficiently. “Gingerbread,” I said, lightly caressing the burnished silver phone, “You are amazing.” Just as I spoke, my phone buzzed.  Not in response to my words, of course.  Just a coincidence.  Surely. I cradled my Gingerbread and drifted off to sleep for another hour. When I woke up, I discovered that Gingerbread had made a small, almost unnoticeable change to one of my widgets.  I have several traffic widgets installed on my homescreen.  They’re kind of awesome.  I press the button and the widget tells me how long it will take me to...